Comin' Thro' the Rye
by Ashlee Sherman
Summary: I loved those colours, to be honest. I'm not kidding. They make me feel better and I can think about things with a lot less stress. Catcher in the Rye rated for suicide and cursing


**Comin' Thro' the Rye**

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Warnings: Suicide, Heavy Holden Cursing (tm)

Summary: I loved those colours, to be honest. I'm not kidding. They make me feel better and I can think about things with a lot less stress.

_Pre-Author's Notes: I love Catcher in the Rye, and so I wanted to write a little quickie about events after the novel. Misspellings and missing punctuation (due to strange edits...) are probably in there somewhere. Also, the story is very random and pulled from the top of my brain. Took around thirty minutes to write..._

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**There was this one time near the old lake that was really a millpond for the place next to it, when I met old Jackieboy and we talked about the water.** Jackieboy should really be Jackiegirl, but he had decided he wasn't meant to be a girl. When I asked him how the hell somebody'd want that, he laughed and said I was still a young kid. If it was one thing I hated, it was when some adult just a few years older would call me a goddam boy. I was just out of highschool. Actually, I'd be just out of highschool if it wasn't for the goddam school and their goddam rules. But I didn't care by then, away. Who cared, anyway? 

Jackieboy had a girly face still that really killed me, but I felt a little mean for pointing it out. I feel bad mostly because old Jackieboy was the rare person who wasn't a damn phony. He had these braces, too, that he said that they'd come out later in the year. He always came out to the lake and just sat and drew things. He was a crazy drawer; it still blows me away to this day of how slick and perfect the lines were. He was one of those fellas that made you feel lower, but then made you inspired to try to draw something, anything. I tried making a damned picture, but it came out fuzzy and uneven.

"Have you ever drawn baseball things?" I had asked one day.

"Why you asking, kid?"

"I'm not a goddam kid. I'm just curious is all."

What was crazy about old Jackieboy is that he was always nice and calm, unlike the phonies like Stradlater or Ackley, or Jacob from seventh grade. Jacob was such a phony that he changed when we were around other people different from us. I don't know why I ever liked him. Now that I look back, he was a real retard. And I mean it. So, Jackieboy and I sat there, with him doodling and talking at the same time--something I would never be able to do--and he told me about what he used to be and all of that sad stuff. Of course, it didn't bother me. At least he'd tell you the truth, even if it was boring or depressing. Man, did he make me feel depressed. Real depressed, you know?

"When my mother found out what I wanted, she didn't talk to me for a long time. When she finally did, it was about how she was going to send me my things"

"That's cruel, I say. I mean, I don't know what I would've done. I don't know. But I think if you want to be something else, I say go ahead. Go right damn ahead," I replied. Jackieboy smiled and would occassionally thread his fingers together on his knees. He may have been a man now, but he still had a really womanly air around him, even with just how he sits. It kind of creeps the damn hell outta me. He had these long eyelashes and pouty lips that were really hot, but thinking like that really made me feel weird. I'm not homosexual, so don't you goddam think it. Don't you think that at all.

We would talk out near that millpond for a couple of months, and he'd tell me about his sister and what a tail she was. He made her sound like a butterfly, with how he used his words. He must've been a writer, too, I think. I think so. But he always made me so depressed that I'd go back to the place where I slept--under the bridge near the bank--and just sleep. I wouldn't stay up and think even a little. It was as if he drained the hell outta me. But I liked that feeling. And the more I hung around Jackieboy, the more phony I felt just hearing him. I wondered all the time how old Phoebe was, and that made me feel even more lousy than usual.

"For chrissake," I said to him one day, feeling exceptionally lousy, "Why'd you do it if you knew that your family'd hate you for it? And why did you leave? That just makes them look like they'd won. That's not very smart at all. Not a goddam person should tell you what you need to be. If they do, they're all idiots. They're all idiots and fakes."

"I swear Holden," he told me once, and he always swore it, too, "you're like a broken record."

He put his sketch book down this time and looked over the lake like he was in a trance. "You're just like Seymour. Yes, just like him except... perhaps a little more intelligent and less crazy." He laughed like a woman. The sun was going now, and we enjoyed it for a moment while I thought of something to say. I always had to think of something to say around Jackieboy.

"Who's Seymour?" I asked, and he chortled like I said something funny. I swear, Jackieboy just kills me sometimes.

"I worked with him a long time ago, when I was still a miss ma'am. He wasn't all there, sad to say, but his viewpoints were strong. He also happened to love the word 'goddam'. He died a few years ago, though. Killed himself." He looked depressed. I hated when he looked depressed.

"He can't say 'goddam' as much as Franklin..."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Hey, do you know why he killed himself?"

Jackieboy laid down on the bank and looked at the sky in all of its red and orange colour. I loved those colours, to be honest. I'm not kidding. They make me feel better and I can think about things with a lot less stress.

"Just... lost, I guess." He paused. "Why are you out here, Holden?"

I folded my arms, thinking about the rye and old Ackley and the prostitute.

"They don't want me is all. My mom and dad are better off. Phoebe, too. I'm just a goddam failure who couldn't even stay in the goddam asylum with the corny therapists and the doctors who were the worst liars in the world. Really, they were. And it'll only be worse if I run away back to my house with my damned tail between my legs. I can't do that. That'd be lousy and..." I don't know why, but I sort of trailed off.

"Holden..." He paused. "Go back home... Your family probably misses you a lot."

I had said goodbye to him that day and retreated back to the bridge, just thinking about Mom and old Phoeb--and Allie, too. I remembered when I played with Phony Jacob. The night was even more so chilly and unbearable, and it made me want my bed and my home more than ever and all. Goddamned cold. And, worst of all, loneliness. I hated being wrong, and for chrissake, I hated having to admit it. During my time in the asylum, I grew up a little. I wasn't a loon. But for Godssake.

I needed a drink. I needed a girl, too.

I woke up that morning from a loud sound--perhaps a car and their goddam engine pops that I hate so much--feeling a little less chilly. Jackieboy's jacket was draped over me, and it made me crack one. He was a nice guy and all, so I automatically decided to pay old Jackieboy a visit down by the millpond. When I came down the bank, I broke into a run. There was a form lying in the shore water, all limp and everything. I was afraid, because I had an idea of who it was. I didn't want to believe it.

Goddam it.

"Aw, Jackie, no..." I said, looking at the body facedown in the water, with his hand holding onto a .45 by a thread. It must've not been too long since it happened. "Jackie... for Chrissake...!" I pulled his body up the muddy bank and fell back. I couldn't think of a goddam thing to do, with him bleeding down the slope and the gun sunk in the shallow shore. I sat there, holding my head in my hands. I wanted to do something to make it change. It was just Phoebe and the Muesum again, and I was in the middle, like a goddam commentary. It made me feel sick. I vomited down in the grass, and caught sight of a slip of paper lying near me, held fast in the Autumn wind by old Jackie's pencil. I reached down and looked at the picture.

It was me, sitting there in the summer, with red colours of the sun setting from his crayons and a perfectly drawn left-handed catcher's mitt. A baseball, too, and all. It said:

_I'm sorry for being such a phony, but I hope you can forgive me. I've been trying to figure things out, and what I'm about to do... or rather, what I have done... It is not the right choice. And I know that. And I'm sorry. Holden... Go back home. You'll regret it if you don't._

_'P.S. That poem you told me was wonderful...'_

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**end.**

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_Post Author's Notes: There are a lot of little things in here that I threw in. Seymour is from Salinger's other work, A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Franklin is from War with the Eskimos, yet another Salinger short story. The left-handed mitt is dedicated to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which has Catcher in the Rye as a very, very important element in their case of a hacker called The Laughing Man (which is yet another Salinger short story). The shorties can be found in his novella, Nine Stories._


End file.
